


I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

by MiryelENG (Miryel)



Category: The Devil All the Time (2020)
Genre: F/M, The Devil All The Time - Freeform, arvin, english isn't my primary language, i started ship them, lenora - Freeform, lenora/arvin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miryel/pseuds/MiryelENG
Summary: “Maybe you prayed enough and that son of a bitch got the divine punishment he deserved. I told you, God and I don't get along, but you invoke him enough for both of us. "“He wasn't the one who sent you to teach them a lesson. You are too impulsive », she resumes him, but she is not angry. They continue to dance, as if this alone could calm all the hatred that sometimes divides them so much.Arvin shrugs. “Even if it were me, they deserved it. It is not impulsiveness. This is called an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth .""But God says turn the other cheek ."“Not my God, Lenora. Maybe yours. "The conversation seems to be over there, and for a moment they stop and look at each other. There is always something that divides them, but most of all it is always faith. Always God, who for Lenora is a light that mends tears in hope and for Arvin is only a hindrance, where he tries to make himself justice as he can. Because Arvin can, has the opportunity, the courage. She kneels and prays, he makes his legs walk and acts.[ Lenora/Arvin - The Devil all The Time - One Shot - english isn't my primary language ]
Relationships: Lenora Laferty/Arvin Russell
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

**I Bet You Look Good on The Dancefloor**

It is the chirping of cicadas, that marks the beginning of summer. It’s the only noise for miles around that makes that town seem almost more welcoming. A mere lie, hidden in minutes of calm that last as long as the blink of an eye; it's so hot that nobody even wants to talk; they don't even look at each other. Everyone is immersed in that moment of reflection before sunset. Before the sun brings the night to that clearing and gives way to sleep, rest and nightmares.

Lenora holds a sheet of paper in her hand. She waves her hot face as she stares at the kitchen cupboard – she’s sitting on a chair that creaks every time she moves a muscle. The flowery dress stuck to her sweaty legs. She peels it off the skin by pinching the fabric; it almost becomes a nervous tic, while the gaze remains there, fixed on nothingness, counting how many cracks there are on the glass of the cupboard and, inside, the reflection of Emma.

Emma’s eyes are fixed beyond the window; watch swallows chasing each other among the leaves of the trees. They are so high that they almost touch the sky. Emma often thinks, maybe always, but she never tells what goes through her head. It closes in the past and never frees it. He keeps it inside, like a bad evil. As if letting it come out of her mouth can break something that has long been broken.

Lenora sighs. It is a faint sound, but amidst the silence it shatters between the walls of that old house. There is a smell of flour and grass, attached to vegetables left in the sink and not yet washed. It’s dinner tomorrow night. Arvin will hate it, but will pretend as always that he likes everything.

She looks at him. His back is pressed against the refrigerator. A cigarette is held in his hand and he looks down on the floor. It is never out of shame or sadness, it is something that captures him inside and bends him. Sometimes he doesn't even notice how much his body speaks in place of his perennial detachment from everything. Yet he is so dear, kind; her unblemished knight, who defends her with bare fists, with his knuckles permanently cracked by the violent contact with the cheekbones of cruel people, who treat her as if she were nothing more than an ugly doll. Arvin never tells her she is beautiful, but his eyes make her understand that even if he doesn't think it, he wants her to believe it. It almost makes she feels like an enchanting princess. She smiles at that thought, and looks back at the opaque glass of the sideboard. The kitchen is bathed in red and gold. It almost seems that God has just occupied it with his love. But Lenora thinks about God less and less often every day and more of other things. To the heart that beats every time a rare smile opens on Arvin's face as he looks at her.

"I feel sleepy. I know, it's early, but I'm sleepy! "

Emma breaks the silence. Talk as if she already knows someone will make a joke about that fact. Arvin chuckles, and takes another drag on his cigarette, before throwing it into a glass full of water which he uses as an ashtray.

“Are you going to sleep? You envy the chickens,” he comments.

Emma gives him a hard look, but it's just a facade. A smile vibrates on the side of her mouth.

“They've been asleep for a long time. Close the windows before you go or tomorrow we will find some rats in the sheets. May God forgive me, those animals disgust me! "

"God forgives you," Arvin ironizes again, and his faith is increasingly opaque; more and more dissolved in a sea of acid. More and more vague. Lenora understands why a little, but doesn't approve. They are both orphans, but where she found comfort in God, Arvin lost it when he thought he took everything away from him. As if he deserved it.

But Lenora is convinced that everything is a plan already written and that every suffering then leads to redemption, joy, happiness. Something that, in Arvin's eyes, she rarely saw.

Emma kisses both cheeks and retreats to her room. His tired footsteps fade when she reaches her room and closes the door behind her. Then silence returns and neither of them breaks it, because it is almost pleasant. After all, when they talk, they often end up arguing about their conflicting ideas and, Lenora, this time doesn't want to convince Arvin that life is more than just revenge and cigarettes consumed between his fingers.

It is at the exact moment in which she decides that perhaps it is time to go away and leave him alone, that she hears soft music echoes between the walls. Emma put on that old record and hadn't listened to it in a long time. She is nostalgic, Lenora knows that; saw it in his eyes. Certainly think of Willard, much more today than usual. How difficult must it be for her not to think about him when she looks at Arvin and sees Willard again in appearance and manner? Maybe even in the eyes. In the perfume. In the hardness of his gaze, and perhaps also in the sweetness he knows how to reserve for her. After all, Arvin has a sun inside, always obscured by black clouds, which he chooses to dodge just for them. For  _ his women _ , as he likes to call them.

It's kind of funny to think of those times when he apostrophes them like that and Uncle Earskell reminds him that they're his too, and Arvin points out that that's a lie he tells himself to feel considered. Lenora smiles at that memory, of the carefree moments that are a rarity at dinner time, but that when they arise they smell of the sea and are as soft as a goose down pillow.

"Lenora?"

She winces and turns to look at him. He has raised another unlit cigarette in mid-air and, with his face tilted to the side, it gives him the feeling that this is not the first time he has called her. She was distracted. To think of something else. Things she misses.

"I was distracted," she smiles awkwardly, and lowers her head.

"I saw. You stared at nothing with an idiot smile. You sounded so happy that I was almost sorry to distract you,” he continues, and he has a variation in his voice that Lenora has been lucky enough to hear rarely. He seems amused. And her heart hurts to hear him like that. It hurts so much that she would want to suffer like that forever, if that is the reason.

"But you did it!"

“I  _ almost _ said  _ sorry!”  _ He replies, then he takes his back from the fridge and he doesn't light that cigarette anymore. He puts it back in the package and reaches for it. He shows her his hand, with a sly smile that illuminates that handsome, rebellious, angular face he has. Lenora raises her face and silently asks him what he is doing. She pulls her dress to hide her legs, a bit awkward.

"Emma put on the  _ Young Love _ record and you haven't stopped stamping your foot in time since it started," he explains and, as cryptic as it sounds, Lenora gets it.

_ Let’s dance? _

"Like when we were children?" She asks and he snorts amused. He shows her hand insistently. Impatience.

"As if you had ever grown up ..." he jokes and she, in fact, is not even offended but pretends to be. She contradicts herself by taking his hand and letting him help her up. It is still hot, and even the north wind has stopped pulling outside. There is only the music that surrounds an old kitchen, which is falling apart, but which has every smell of home.

He clasps one hand around her waist, and the other squeezes hers. Lenora clings to his shoulder with the free one and, with an awkward smile, gestures to him that yes, they  _ can dance _ . She is ready, even if clumsy. Even if she has never been able to. She consoles her that Arvin is even worse than her.

He chuckles.

There is no time, nor what surrounds them, nor that of their bodies. They are just slow movements, eyes that meet, faint smiles that burst inside. Like a bomb in the soul. Something that warms the veins and cools the head.

"How did it go today? Did they bother you?” He asks, but he is so calm that he already seems to know the answer. Of course he knows! Of course he knows!

"No, nobody. On the contrary,” Lenora begins, then releases a light sigh, before raising an eyebrow. “I heard that Gene Dinwoodie was attacked and his father says he doesn't want to say who it was. Do you know something about it?"

"No, why should I have to know?" Arvin replies too succinctly; too fast to have even thought about it. As if Lenora didn't know every single nuance of her lies. She's not happy with what Arvin did to Dinwoodie, but inside she feels heartened by the fact that probably neither he nor his friends will touch her anymore. They won't hurt her anymore, but at what price? Arvin's soul is again stained with dark, tar - bubbles of oil bursting and dripping down his back. They form black wings that are the same color as the devil.

“To defend me. It would have been enough to pray. Pray for their redemption. "

“Maybe you prayed enough and that son of a bitch got the divine punishment he deserved. I told you, God and I don't get along, but you invoke him enough for both of us. "

“He wasn't the one who sent you to teach them a lesson. You are too impulsive », she resumes him, but she is not angry. They continue to dance, as if this alone could calm all the hatred that sometimes divides them so much.

Arvin shrugs. “Even if it were me, they deserved it. It is not impulsiveness. This is called an  _ eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth _ . "

"But God says  _ turn the other cheek _ ."

“Not my God, Lenora. Maybe yours. "

The conversation seems to be over there, and for a moment they stop and look at each other. There is always something that divides them, but most of all it is always faith. Always God, who for Lenora is a light that mends tears in hope and for Arvin is only a hindrance, where he tries to make himself justice as he can. Because Arvin can, has the opportunity, the courage. She kneels and prays, he makes his legs walk and acts.

Then Arvin sighs and starts rocking again, never leaving her. Lenora lets herself be guided in that careless dance, which however has the power to fill gaps. Those who, usually, bring only silence and from which she runs away, leaving him alone.

Arvin will also be the  _ Devil _ , the one he has seen  _ all the time _ since childhood , but he saves her every time. She comes to her rescue when she prays that no one will harm her anymore. He appears out of nowhere, at times, takes kicks and punches but gives just as many. He fights as long as he has breath in his body. He fights until his legs give out. He fights for her, only for her. After all, even Lucifer was an Angel once ...

She smiles sadly. "Thanks a lot."

"About what?"

"For what you say you  _ did _ n't do," she says, and he raises an eyebrow before laughing heartily, tilting his head back. A part of Arvin who is lucky enough to be able to see, not that often, but enough of the way it's done.

Then he hugs her. He holds her tight, while he laughs again and she follows him, weak, happy. They dance again, they rock slowly in the middle of that kitchen, then the music stops and they stay like that, still. She with her face hidden in his chest and he with his chin resting on his head. They both sigh, then they look at each other and there is a lightness in the air that makes Lenora almost forget that God exists. It even makes her forget that, sometimes, she and Arvin just can't meet.

When it happens it's like a spell that lasts a moment, and this time too it is. He kisses her head; it remains attached to the skin of her hair for an infinite time. So much so that Lenora feels her face on fire; then he raises her face with two fingers, leaves her another kiss on the forehead and, with a smile that smacks of things neither of them know, he breaks away from her.

"Goodnight," he says, and he takes the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and taps the bottom to release one, he turns and walks to the door. He leaves, as always, and leaves her there, alone and full of questions and not even an answer.

Lenora is shattered, every time that rope that is not taut for a while finally breaks. It still divides them, still makes them Emma's orphans and nothing more. She sits down again in that creaking chair, hides her legs by pulling on her skirt and then puts a hand on her heart. It beats so hard that she has a feeling it will soon stop and kill her.

It is not love for God, that is not painful and does not scare her. It illuminates it, radiates it, fills it with light.

The black she feels inside hurts his heart, stomach and head. Yet she feels light in the same way, although darkness and terror fill her.

It is Arvin who makes her feel this way and, like every sin in the world, she cannot help but be fascinated by it, aware that soon, all this love she has to give, will tear her apart.

After all, Arvin only knows how to destroy. He'll do it with her too, sooner or later, but at least it'll be sweet.

**The End**


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